because you make me feel like it's the year instagram photos try to replicate, but you do it without a special filter. i reckon being the oldest fishing pier in the atlantic coast helps with that.

because you have photos of happy, sunburned people with their biggest fish catches hanging on your walls. real pictures. developed at a drugstore.

because you sell ice cream. really, really good ice cream.

because you are open 24 hours, and that is awesome.

because walking on a wooden pier at night and peering into the black of the ocean and hearing the crash of the waves is simultaneously so romantic and sad and present and nostalgic that i have no choice but to let go, relax, let the tension slide away.

because fishing is meditating, and it is amazing to walk down a long promenade and see people of all shapes and sizes meditating together in the same way.

because you used to have the best baseball pinball machine, which my cousins, my siblings, and i played approximately one billion and seven times. it was yellow, and if you managed to get that silver ball to go up the metal ramp in the middle, you scored a home run. i know you don't have it anymore. that's okay. the ten-year-old in me will always love you for it anyway.